Root beer and Magic
by BIFF1
Summary: Needy visits the cemetery and finds herself remembering some particular things about Colin Grey.
1. Rootbeer and Magic

With the band dead, with revenge served cold and bloody she had gone to the logical end.

The graveyard.

It was late or early she never had been very clear on how the wee small hours worked. She just knew that it was sometime before dawn and after midnight. The cemetery was light up by moonlight and the far street lights, the grass was damp and bright like crayons.

There were flowers on Jennifer's grave and she stood there for a moment wondering if she should remove the flowers. Then again the Jennifer the flowers were for was dead...she'd just been gone longer than most people had realised.

"Sandbox..." She whispered her fingers running along the headstone moving on, further in this glorified park filled with dead people was the love of her life and she didn't feel right leaving this place forever without saying goodbye to Chip.

His grave was too close to Jennifer's for her taste but what was she going to do? Dig him up and put him somewhere else? It wasn't like the important parts of Chip Dove where down there anyway.

There were less flowers on his grave and that just wasn't right. She went back to Jen's and took a bunch of flowers and placed them at Chips grave. She falls to her knees at his grave and places a kiss on the headstone. Chip was a good person, she knows that he went to heaven, can feel it in her bones, in her soul. She just knows t because if anyone deserves heaven is Chip.

She wants to just stay there, just let the police arrive and take her away yet again but what's the point since she is utterly alone here.

Needy pushes herself up and starts towards the back of the cemetery, she'll climb the fence and head off into the world to fight demons or some shit. A cloud uncovers the moon and shines against a random headstone and she stops to look at it because it turns out not to be random at all.

Colin Grey.

Everything in her body lurches forward because if it wasn't for her big mouth Colin would still be alive. Jen and Chip's deaths were inevitable in the grand scheme of Jennifer Check becoming a demon, but Colin. He was her fault and looking at his grave all she can think of is seven minutes in heaven in Megan Kulleski's basement.

She had kissed him once. Back when it was just her and Jennifer against the world, early junior high when they still had sleep overs and basically ate lip smackers and Chip was just a boy in her intro to band class.

A class she later dropped upon realising she had no musical inclination.

Seven minutes in heaven, in Megan Kulleski's basement closet. She remembers the smell of moth balls and old fur coats and the stripe of orange light that light up Colin's face.

The nervous tumbling in her stomach, she blurted out how disappointing this was and the look of horror and devastation that flashed across his face, no! No! She had told him quickly, I just always thought Heaven would be more fluffy and smell less like moth balls.

He had laughed and it was amazing. A laugh that reached his eyes and pulled at parts of her she was just starting to realise existed.

She remembers smiling pleased with herself and the almost sudden crashing silence in the closet. His hand was on her, thumb against her neck rubbing softly like he knew what he was doing.

He closed the small distance between them and hovered just too far away to do anything and she licked her lips, eyes focused on his mouth, she's seen Jennifer do it before, it was the trick she used to get boys to kiss her and good gravy it actually worked.

His mouth came down on hers and her heart was in her throat, he tasted of root beer and magic as far as she was concerned.

Her hands moved on there own, touching the collar of his shirt, the soft hot skin of his neck and the soft silky strands of his hair.

He had his tongue in her mouth and it sent a tense kind of thrill through her body.

Four and a half minutes in heaven.

Until Jen had ripped open the door, she'd become bored and she pulled away from him.

She had wondered if he still tasted of Root Beer when he slid into his seat next to her in creative non- fiction several years later.


	2. Fruit punch

A/N: So this is a little Needy/Colin story it had originally alternated point of views but after reworking the story that didn't really fit any more but I really liked Colin's memory so i've added it as a bonus chapter!

He'd kissed her once, a long time ago when he still wore colours and the only significant other she had was Jennifer Check.

Seven minutes in heaven, she'd joked about being disappointed, and when she saw the devastation flash across his face she clarified that she was expecting heaven to be a lot more fluffy and smell a lot less like moth balls and old fur.

He had laughed at that and watched in the dim of the closet as a smile spread across her face. He decided then that he liked her smile, it was natural and warm and pulled at something inside him.

His arm crossed the vast distance between them in the tiny closet and his hand landed on the crook of her neck. She looked at him with wide expectant eyes and he watched her tongue dart out over her lips.

With a heart like a rabbit he moved and his mouth covered her own. She tasted of fruit punch and magic as far as he was concerned.

Her hands came up to him, hot little hands on his collar and neck, fingers creeping into his hair, her mouth pressing back parting a little.

His tongue darted into her mouth rubbing along her teeth and tongue his gut tightening. Her breath coming in ragged little bursts against his mouth.

Four and a half minutes of heaven before Jennifer Check ripped the closet door open and Needy had flown away from him.

He was sure she didn't even remember.


	3. Damp Silk

**Silk**

* * *

In spite of what she let Chip believe his...package isn't the first she's seen or even touched. The first she'd...experienced happened three months before she and Chip even went to third base.

Colin had been sick or "sick" whichever it was she was put in charge of sending home his econ homework. Turned out he lived only two blocks away from her so it wasn't like she was horribly inconvenienced or anything.

The house was a modest conservative two floor similar to her own with a named mailbox out front and a cobbled front walk. She stood on the porch and knocked, if everything went well Colin would answer the door in a varying state of health and she would relay the homework and be merrily on her way. She was going to watch LOST with Jen and see if they could figure out what the hell was going on.

Mrs. Gray answered the door.

"Hello Mrs. Gray, I was hoping to give Colin an extra assignment." She smiled brightly trying to be purposely vague in case he'd just caught a case of the _too nice outsides_ rather than the flu.

"Oh? Anita isn't it?"

She nods and Mrs. Gray steps aside to allow her into the house.

"Colin's just upstairs, go ahead."

"Thanks." She pulls her backpack up and climbs the stairs. The walls are littered with vacation pictures and wedding pictures and cut newspaper articles. She pauses on the landing, it's an article that Colin wrote last year about deforestation, a swan song of a thing that she has cut out and hidden at the back of her desk drawer.

She continues down the hall to an open door with a Smiths poster. She let's herself into the room, it's empty save for the soft sounds of Morrisey.

"Colin?" She calls out softly. The room is pretty much what she thought, a lot of black and band posters, a wall is lined with a bookcase and she runs her hand across the spines, she drops the econ homework on the desk by the open window.

She hears another door open and turns to see Colin standing there dripping wet with a towel around his shoulders and his hands in his hair and that's all.

"Colin-" she tries to pull her eyes away but it's too late the image is burned into the back of her brain.

"Needy!" Her name flies out of his mouth in a desperate horrified sound and he pulls the towel from his shoulders and she slaps her hands over her eyes and trips over her own feet and tumbles into the desk chair.

"I didn't see anything!" She almost yells and she says it in such a way that she might as well be yelling _I've seen your penis._

"Fuck what are you doing here?" He asks and she peeks at him through her fingers. His face is tomato red and the color is travelling down his neck.

"Econ homework." She points at his desk or at least where she thinks his desk is, oh god he's pissed at her! Well why wouldn't he be? She's just barged into his room unannounced and uninvited and bam **PENIS**!

She gropes out behind her and feels her way back to the door her eyes shut hard and a hand over them as if to stop herself from peeking.

"Needy? You're going to hurt yourself open your eyes." He tells her and she can hear rustling thankfully like clothes going on his lean body.

Not that she had noticed he even had a lean body!

"I'm fine thanks." She tells him and her hand chooses that moment to run over a teetering book in the case and send it crashing down into her leg. "Fudge!" She let's out and her mouth twists and her hand comes away from her face but her eyes stay firmly shut.

The hand she had been using as a blinder moved out in front of her and touched something soft and slightly damp.

"What's..." She opened her eyes to find Colin standing right in front of her her hand firmly pressing on Colin's skin. A very specific part of his skin. Her hand was pressed against the length of him tips of her fingers resting on his open jeans, "oh my god." She whispered and her hand lingered too long on his soft skin, he felt of silk and when she moved her hand up and away from him he had tried desperately to stifle a low soft moan.

"I have a boyfriend!" She tells him or herself and runs out the bedroom, down the hall, past Mrs. Gray and all the way to her house.

She was in his room a grand total of five, five and a half minutes and she had not only seen his...but touched!

Jen is waiting impatiently on her front step, "what is your problem?"

"Penis." Is all she can manage and Jen comes to her own conclusion that Chip was trying to make her touch it.

It takes three months before she can talk to Colin again.


	4. Cigarette Smoke

**Cigarette Smoke**

* * *

She remembers thinking he looks almost normal in his gym uniform, the silver on his mouth and the died black of his hair the only thing exposing his Dead Boy fashion sense. The guyliner is scrubbed away so he's just a pale lanky boy standing off to the side with that look on his face like he'd rather be anywhere else.

She recognises that look because it matches her own.

Normally she doesn't have a problem with gym, she's fast and has good lungs so even the sports that don't come easy aren't straining or painful. But this...this is some strange form of torture.

Waltz.

Why is this even a lesson? They spend all there time trying to keep the students apart then again perhaps they were of the naïve notion that it would stop all the grinding and skank dancing.

How stupid could they be.

"Waltz." Coach Wisserman tapped his clipboard ,"pair up." He told them with a gruff grunt and went over to set up the music.

She did a quick head count as people paired off with friends and boyfriends. She had the unfortunate luck to be in a different gym block to both Jennifer and Chip.

But they were short a boy, which meant someone born under a bad sign would end up waltzing with Coach W.

Some Dead Girl was moving toward Colin and she knew it was now or never.

"Colin!" She lifted an arm to call him over.

Eyes wide as if pulled out of some sort of daze he nodded and walked over to her.

"Hey Needy." He greets her as if he's surprised to see her and then again she's pretty sure she hasn't seen him in class before.

"Hey Colin, thanks I just really don't want to pair up with Coach W." She tells him as if she wants to make sure that everyone here knows that she's dancing with him out of need not want.

He shrugs and looks over his shoulder, "poor Maddie." he says but there's a smirk on his face like maybe he enjoys her pain a little.

"Let's get this sh-lesson started." Coach hollers over the clatter of a class full of sixteen, seventeen year olds trying to figure out what hand goes where.

The music starts up and Coach demonstrates where the mans hands should go on poor Maddie, she can see Colin take a breath before placing his hand on her back, just below her shoulder blade and takes her hand in his other. She follows suit and puts her free hand on his upper arm so they a small triangle of space between them.

His hands are hot and his closeness pulls at something in her gut.

He smells faintly of cigarette smoke and coffee like he's some sort of french existentialist.

She puts her head down to look at her feet through the small space between them and it brings her body closer to his and she can feel his hand slide down and in, towards the small of her back.

"Stop looking at your feet, I'm suppose to guide you." He tells her softly and with those words drums his fingers on her back.

"I'm worried I'm going to step on your feet." She tells and is pleased that the words don't seem forced or strange in her mouth. Until a short while ago everytime they were in the same room her skin would flush and she couldn't help but imagine him naked.

"I'm tough Needy, I can take it." He tells her and she looks up at him and he's all disarming smile and bright eyes.

She laughs a little as they follow the boxed steps with relative ease.

Dancing with Colin feels natural and easy, and she may or may not be imaging that there's a rhythmic flow to the steps. Her eyes on him she flows across the floor like she's water, the hand at her back is firm and guides her easily through the steps.

Somehow through the course of the lesson the small triangle of space between them dissipates and she's pressed ever so slightly into his chest.

The smell of smoke lingers in his hair and on his skin and she finds that its the most bearable its ever been, almost as if they smelt good on him.

She finds herself taking deeper breaths.

"Hey, don't make me get the ruler Gray! Lesnikki!" Coach Wisserman yells out and she and Colin step apart and it's oddly painful, the loss of body heat and smell, his hot breath on her cheek but her heart is thumping against her chest like its trying to admit to a crime.

His cheeks are coloured and his fingers tighten their grip on her hand but he doesn't say much more than counting softly under his breath for the duration of the class.


End file.
